


the gold star

by enmity



Category: Persona 2, Persona Series
Genre: F/F, Gen, Pre-Canon, Pre-Slash, not est relationship sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 00:07:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13154949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: They move in together in the summer, some years after high school, after all the prerequisite catching-ups and reminiscing are done and over with.





	the gold star

**Author's Note:**

> this is super rough srry but i find this ship extremely hard to write because when i think about it i always end up crying real tears like a god damn w*ssy and i'm not about that life but just this once i can pull through
> 
> this was supposed to be holiday-themed but i live in the tropics near the equator and don't celebrate christmas LMFAO (fyi the title isn't an insidious reference, just a remnant of its short-lived festive concept)

They move in together in the summer, some years after high school, after all the prerequisite catching-ups and reminiscing are done and over with; hugs and nostalgic conversations over food bridging the invisible distance stretching between them since graduation so splendidly, it almost feels like there were no distance to make up for at all.

Like she was always meant to find Maya again, be it while walking the city streets or booking the same overpriced restaurant or now, sprawled across the living room floor of their new shared apartment, all clean walls and shiny linoleum, both of them spent from the sweltering air and a day of moving and re-moving furniture.

Ulala’s spread like a starfish across the cold floor and she feels giddy, exhausted, and even though there are still half a dozen boxes to unpack she climbs up and reaches to unlatch the window instead, pushing away the curtains to welcome the fleeting hope of a breeze rolling in.

The afternoon sun lingers gold and warm on her face as she looks over her shoulder. Maya lying on her side, eyes half-shut, palm pressed between her cheek and the floor, and all over again it’s like the languid summer days spent in her room with the fans on and their homework forgotten, both of them talking of nothing, doing nothing in particular, neither thinking of graduation or boys or the future. No distance at all, she thinks, except her hair had been shorter then, and not the chemical shock of red and white it is now.

Maya’s a journalist now, or something; reaching for the stars and her life’s dreams and all that. If Ulala’s lucky she might get promoted to sales department by the end of the year _. Might._

“I’m tired,” Ulala decides, shaking the thought away. “Let’s take a break! I’ve got oranges in the fridge.”

“Really?” Maya stirs from her halfhearted slumber, perking up.

“Yes,” she shrugs, “from my grandmother. Housewarming gifts, or something like that.”

Ulala pulls them cold and stacked in a plate on the makeshift table between them fashioned out of two cardboard boxes yet to be unsealed. The TV is on, airing a rerun of a show she’s watched before. The oranges are sweet—the taste reminds Ulala of something too faraway to be nostalgic—and Maya pushes them into her mouth slice by slice, too quickly, her eyes set to the flickering screen broadcasting old jokes like it’s the most amusing thing in the world.

The juice runs clear and cool and careless down Maya’s chin, the pink edge of her mouth, and Ulala realizes too late that it’s rude to stare. Even back then, she’d always had trouble looking away from her. The barest amount of space between them now, their arms almost overlapping across the cardboard boxes, and if she moved just an inch she might be able to catch Maya’s hand in hers—but then, no one could say what might happen next, could they? She hadn’t been able to do anything five years ago and hell if she can do anything now.

Five years and neither of them have changed. Maya’s still cheerful and oblivious and _content_ and Ulala’s the girl who’s none of the above, a shadow still laboring under the delusion of someday being something worth looking at, if only for one person. Somebody to say she was the sort of person worth having around, for all that she is.

…Was it for that?

Was it for that, that she’d sought Maya out again, after those years of separation—to hear those words from her and settle for them, even when she knows they’re not the right ones, never the right ones?

Not even Ulala can answer that. She doesn’t want to.

She doesn’t voice any of this, of course. She pulls her hand away and she smiles and says, instead, “You’ve got orange all over your face, dummy.”

And Maya looks back at Ulala, and she smiles, and laughs—

“What’s so funny!”

—and slowly, it begins to smolder, the bitter resentful fondness inside of her, not knowing what else to do or be. For now, she doesn’t mind it. She doesn’t mind it the least. She’ll figure it out one day.

Because between the two of them, it will be Ulala who changes first. And someday—someday there will truly be no distance between them at all.

She hopes.


End file.
